Haydee Urita-Lopez
Haydee Urita Lopez is a Principal City Planner for the Los Angeles City Planning Department. With more than 15 years experience serving multilingual and multicultural communities, she has worked at various capacities and different levels of public service across Southern California. She has contributed to inclusive and collaborative community planning updates in Boyle Heights, South Los Angeles, Westside, Wilmington-Harbor City, and Harbor Gateway communities. She also serves as a key member of the Los Angeles Planning Department's Committee on Racial Justice, Equity and Transformative Planning. She manages the Policy Division for the West, South, and Harbor Communities, which include both immediate neighborhood planning initiatives such as the Slauson Corridor TNP and the Venice LCP, as well as comprehensive updates of the Community Plans for the Westside and Harbor areas. Previous to joining City Planning in 2006, she worked at the State and local school district level on policy and major public facilities projects, including schools and parks. More recently, she helped create green zones for the Clean Up Green Up (CUGU) Ordinance, and the outreach efforts for the City’s Health Element - the Plan for Healthy LA elevating the critical and intersectional role that planning plays in shaping healthy communities. She has lived and studied abroad in Mexico City and Brazil, and graduated from UCLA with a dual master’s degree in Urban Planning and Latin American studies. This academic training has helped broaden her holistic approach to planning, as she has served as an Ethnic Studies instructor at Citrus College, and as a Chicana/o Studies instructor at East Los Angeles College where she has taught various topics that explore the complexity and richness of Chicano and Latinx experiences. Because of her dedication to community college teaching, mentorship, and experience in helping to support the Department's Student Professional Worker (SPW) program she was recently appointed as the department's liaison to the Youth Development Department furthering the city's efforts to strengthen public service career pathways.